“SEO is a marketing function for sure, but it needs to be baked into a product, not slapped on like icing after the cake is baked.”

Duane Forrester

Why Every College Student Must Vote For Barack Obama

With elections a week away it is finally time to cast your vote for the next president of the United States. Some of you are probably very sure about who you are voting for, while others, and I would guess most, are still undecided. That’s why to help you make a choice, we are providing two guest blogs this week telling you why you should vote for Barack Obama (today’s post) and why you should vote for Mitt Romney. For team Mitt, visit here.

Keep in mind, this is a guest blog written by a college student who is not employed by or associated with Waspit. These views are not necessarily aligned with the company’s and should be received as the writer’s opinion, not Waspit’s. Waspit will not share its opinion on the matter, but we love to promote a fair democracy and help offer an abundance of information for more informed decisions.

If you are a heterosexual white male who nets more than $500,000 a year, you may not want to vote for Barack Obama. However, if you fall into any other category, then on November 6th you should cast your ballot to reelect the President. Most college students fall into the latter category, but may not realize how seriously this election will affect them and their future. I will highlight a few issues that directly concern students now and also will shape much of their adult life.

Education An issue close to any college-aged student’s heart is how to finance continuing education. Barack Obama reshaped how the federal government distributes Pell Grants, and as a consequence has invested over $50 billion dollars that would have gone to private banking firms back into these grants that help middle-class families send their kids to college. He also raised the maximum Pell Grant award and has almost doubled the number of people receiving this funding. President Obama implemented a program to cap the amount of money a graduate is expected to repay on their loans to 10% of their income, and he also maintained the low interest rates on federally subsidized Stafford loans that were supposed to double, saving students thousands as they begin their careers. As a comparison, Paul Ryan would like to cut the Pell Grants program by $200 billion.

To All Women… One group that cannot afford to lose Barack Obama as president is women. When he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009 President Obama signaled his strong support for women and their rights, and he has continued to do so throughout his presidency. He created the White House Council on Women and Girls to ensure that women are being properly represented in all government agencies, and that they benefit equally from all policy that is written. As President he has quite literally done too many things for me to list here, including the creation of tax provisions for working families, expanding services for victims of domestic violence, and removing barriers for female service members in our military (plus so, so much more).

Women are also one of many beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as “Obamacare.” Access to free or affordable preventative care such as birth control, breast cancer screenings, and an affirmation of the right to choose whether to continue a pregnancy are all rights secured for women by this law. Who else benefits? If you are graduating from college this year and have not found a job that provides health insurance, you can stay on your parents plan until you are 26, removing worries that you will not be covered after college (3.1 million Americans fall into this category). Insurance companies can no longer refuse to cover you if you have a condition that may cost them more money, and beginning in 2014 there will be a public option available for insurance, forcing private companies to bring rates down to a manageable level and play by fair compensation rules.

Stimulating the Economy After the economic disaster of 2008 following a number of collapses in a market with too few regulations, President Obama used a stimulus plan in order to put our economy back on track. Jobs were being lost at a rapid rate, but when he took office that rate slowed down. Since turning around this trend in March 2010, jobs have been added to the private sector by the thousands every single month. There have been 31 straight months of growth, something we cannot afford to lose in 2013. Instead of letting our manufacturers go bankrupt because of poor policies by the previous administration, Barack Obama rescued our American industries. They have come back in full force and are now growing, reinvesting in the economy and paying back what the government gave them. He then passed reforms that regulate Wall Street and make sure they can never do what they did from 2000 to 2008 again, effectively protecting us as emerging members of the American economy and future investors. After graduation there will be more American jobs available for us, and we will be able to pay back those loans the federal government subsidized for us. Regulation of the free market is key in order to make sure every company plays by the same rules and small businesses have a chance to thrive, something Mitt Romney does not recognize in his economic plan.

The Take Away As an emerging adult, I strongly agree with the policies of President Obama and appreciate what he has invested in my country and me. He repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t tell and vocally supported same-sex marriage, affirming the rights of LGBT Americans. He expects the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share and he works for the middle class. He believes in women and their place in our country. Beyond the issues facing young Americans, he also has a solid tax plan, supports social security, and believes in a foreign policy that respects other nations while revering the sacrifices of our service members and veterans. I encourage everyone to not only read his views on these important issues but also look at his record and see what he has done for every American citizen.

As a college student, I am excited to cast my vote for Barack Obama on November 6th. I hope I have highlighted a few reasons that everyone my age (and beyond) should feel the same way. This election does mean something to us and it will affect our future, so don’t sit at home on election day thinking politics have no place in your life. Read the facts, look at their records, and please, please GO VOTE!

Sophia Spadafore is a senior at the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Her concentration is The Formation and Deconstruction of Identity, with a minor in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Studies. Sophia is originally from Phoenix, AZ but found the wide-open spaces of the desert too stifling, so she moved to New York City. She dreams of one day becoming a surgeon so she can follow in the footsteps of Meredith Grey, but perhaps with real patients and scalpels.

SEO and SEM are not competing services. SEO is considered a subset of SEM services. Today, if you want to conduct business on the Internet you need to be visible in both organic and advertised links, which means you need both SEO and SEM.

Internet Marketing

Sitelinks can improve the appearance of your snippet in Google search results and this means higher Click Through Rates (CTR) and more traffic. Although you cannot directly specify sitelinks (they are automated by the Google algorithm), there are a number of ways to help Google pick the right sitelinks for your website. In this post […]

The meta description is a short text preview displayed for each search result that summarizes a page’s content. Search engines show the meta description when it’s highly relevant to what the user is searching otherwise they might pick text from the page and create a dynamic description. Although meta descriptions don’t have a direct effect […]

Each page or post can have multiple headings. The <h1> HTML tag is usually used for the title of a page or post and it is the first header visible on a page. The formatting of an h1 usually differs from the rest of the header tags found on a page (h2, h3, h4). In […]

Internal linking is very important not only for SEO but for an enhanced user experience. Best practices for internal linking dictate that any links pointing to pages within the website should provide value to users and also assist search engines discover more pages from that website. Table of Contents What is internal linking? Why does […]

Once you get started with on-page SEO, the first task in your list is title tag optimization. Title tags are very important for SEO for two main reasons. First, the title tag is shown in the search results so this is what users see even before visiting your website and second, it gives a big […]